Photographic material as referred to herein is understood to be generally planar, may comprise film or paper, may produce a black-and-white or color image, and may be in a continuous web form or may comprise discrete sheets.
Silver halide photographic materials are well-known, and are processed to generate a silver or dye image via a development stage followed by a series of stages to stabilize and provide permanence to the image. The wash stages convert and remove unwanted materials from the coated photographic layers which would either interfere with the quality of the final image or cause degradation of the image with time. In typical color systems the development stage is followed by a bleach stage to oxidize the developed silver to a form which can be dissolved by a fixing agent in the same or a separate bath. Such silver removal stages are then followed by a washing stage using water, or other wash solution, or a stabilization stage using a stabilizer solution. Such stages remove residual chemicals and may also include conversion reactions between stabilizer solution components and materials within the coated layers. These stages are required to provide the required degree of permanence to the final image.
The various processing stages may comprise baths in which batches of the photographic material are immersed, but these can involve large quantities of solution that have to be replenished to maintain their efficacy, and the effluent subsequently has to be removed. It also known as an alternative to carry out surface processing of photographic material in which a metered amount of processing solution is deposited onto a surface of the material, resulting in only a small amount being carried over by the material from one stage to the next, thus significantly reducing the amount of effluent. GB-A-2 306 017 discloses surface processing apparatus in which solution is applied in precise quantities to the sensitized side of photographic sheet film as it is conveyed on an endless belt beneath an advantageous form of applicator arrangement that comprises three rollers. The processing solution, for example developer, is metered onto an upper roller and is then transferred to the film as it is driven under lower rollers by the belt. The film is then passed through further processing stages, with stop, fixing and wash stages being provided by V-shaped tanks containing similarly-shaped heating platens that leave narrow processing channels through which the photographic material passes.
It is desired to provide photographic processing that not only takes advantage where possible of the low quantities of solution involved in surface processing, but which also allows processing of the material in a tank where surface processing is not suitable for any reason.